Slugfest

Eighteen

“I don’t get it. If he was here, why didn’t he just find me? I left him my booth number.”

“’Cause he didn’t have no badge. Do we need to go over that again? Another guard gave him the boot yesterday afternoon. I’m just glad the kid was here. I had a premonition about him. My mother had the gift. In our old neighborhood, she knew who was gonna die right before it happened.”

Given Rolanda’s size and temperament, it occurred to me her mom might have been a hit woman, but I kept that thought to myself.

“I have a little of it, too,” she said. “The gift. You don’t believe me, right?”

“What is it?” I asked, hoping I didn’t look too skeptical and she didn’t see whatever woo woo glow she’d seen around the kid around me.

“Hard to define,” she said. “When I saw the accident this morning, I thought it might be the Happy Valley kid, but it was Otis Randolph, one of the overnight workers.”

“Is he all right?”

She shook her head. “Didn’t even make it to the hospital. Looks like he broke his neck. The escalator turns off automatically, so maybe he was on it and it jolted to a stop, throwing him down the stairs. The police aren’t sure what happened—I’m just guessing.”

“I’m sorry. That’s horrible. Were you friends?”

“I knew him. At first when I saw the jeans and boots, I thought it might be our boy who sneaked in after the kerfluffle yesterday.”

Kerfluffle. I liked that. And hadn’t she referred to herself as a martinet the other day? Between her psychic abilities and her colorful vocabulary, Rolanda was getting more interesting.

I dialed the number on the bulletin board. The same one Babe had given me. It kicked into voice mail, and I left a message, saying the bag was at booth 1142, if he could get in (Rolanda was still within earshot). Otherwise he should call me and I’d arrange to meet him. Out of habit I left my cell phone and my home phone numbers.

“Look at this—you’re a popular girl. Here’s another one.”

Rolanda plucked a pink index card from the board. It was from Connie.

Hi, Paula, Didn’t have your number but hope you see this. Meet me at the St. George at 7 p.m. Connie A.

The I’s were dotted with circles. Instead of periods, she made little daisy-shaped characters. Aaaay.

I checked my watch. “You could pretend you didn’t see it,” Rolanda said.

“She’d know I was lying. I’m a terrible liar.” The last thing I wanted to do was have drinks with a woman who made up her own punctuation marks, but it was a good hotel with a great bar and she was buying.

By that time the escalators had been turned off and Rolanda and I walked to the top of the staircase. The reception didn’t start until 5:30 P.M. the next day, and I considered going back onto the floor for the bag, but Rolanda stopped me.

“Don’t bother. These doors are locked.”

“All right, since you have all the answers, what do people wear to this shindig tomorrow night?”

“Last year we had an international theme. People had all sorts of getups. One woman wore a three-foot headdress that was supposed to be Brazilian. She had to sit in a chair and be carried in because she couldn’t fit through the doorway standing up.”

“Was she wearing her badge?”

“Damn skippy.”